Subject: [PATCH net 02/10] netfilter: nft_counter: serialize reset with spinlock

From: Florian Westphal <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:32:25 +0100

From: Brian Witte <[email-masked]>

Add a global static spinlock to serialize counter fetch+reset
operations, preventing concurrent dump-and-reset from underrunning
values.

The lock is taken before fetching the total so that two parallel
resets cannot both read the same counter values and then both
subtract them.

A global lock is used for simplicity since resets are infrequent.
If this becomes a bottleneck, it can be replaced with a per-net
lock later.

Fixes: bd662c4218f9 ("netfilter: nf_tables: Add locking for NFT_MSG_GETOBJ_RESET requests")
Fixes: 3d483faa6663 ("netfilter: nf_tables: Add locking for NFT_MSG_GETSETELEM_RESET requests")
Fixes: 3cb03edb4de3 ("netfilter: nf_tables: Add locking for NFT_MSG_GETRULE_RESET requests")
Suggested-by: Florian Westphal <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: Brian Witte <[email-masked]>
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <[email-masked]>
---
 net/netfilter/nft_counter.c | 20 ++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/netfilter/nft_counter.c b/net/netfilter/nft_counter.c
index 0d70325280cc..169ae93688bc 100644
--- a/net/netfilter/nft_counter.c
+++ b/net/netfilter/nft_counter.c
@@ -32,6 +32,9 @@ struct nft_counter_percpu_priv {
 
 static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct u64_stats_sync, nft_counter_sync);
 
+/* control plane only: sync fetch+reset */
+static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(nft_counter_lock);
+
 static inline void nft_counter_do_eval(struct nft_counter_percpu_priv *priv,
 				       struct nft_regs *regs,
 				       const struct nft_pktinfo *pkt)
@@ -148,13 +151,25 @@ static void nft_counter_fetch(struct nft_counter_percpu_priv *priv,
 	}
 }
 
+static void nft_counter_fetch_and_reset(struct nft_counter_percpu_priv *priv,
+					struct nft_counter_tot *total)
+{
+	spin_lock(&nft_counter_lock);
+	nft_counter_fetch(priv, total);
+	nft_counter_reset(priv, total);
+	spin_unlock(&nft_counter_lock);
+}
+
 static int nft_counter_do_dump(struct sk_buff *skb,
 			       struct nft_counter_percpu_priv *priv,
 			       bool reset)
 {
 	struct nft_counter_tot total;
 
-	nft_counter_fetch(priv, &total);
+	if (unlikely(reset))
+		nft_counter_fetch_and_reset(priv, &total);
+	else
+		nft_counter_fetch(priv, &total);
 
 	if (nla_put_be64(skb, NFTA_COUNTER_BYTES, cpu_to_be64(total.bytes),
 			 NFTA_COUNTER_PAD) ||
@@ -162,9 +177,6 @@ static int nft_counter_do_dump(struct sk_buff *skb,
 			 NFTA_COUNTER_PAD))
 		goto nla_put_failure;
 
-	if (reset)
-		nft_counter_reset(priv, &total);
-
 	return 0;
 
 nla_put_failure:
-- 
2.52.0